Posted on 06/28/2006 6:09:35 PM PDT by Dr.Syn
You Call This A War? June 29, 2006 Maybe those in command of the War On Terror should take a break and watch a movie. They might get a clue about what to do when you ask brave Americans to go in harm’s way, and fight a WAR. Ask Sean Connery...You wanna know how you do it? Here's how, they pull a knife, you pull a gun. He sends one of yours to the hospital, you send on of his to the morgue!...Now do you want to do that? Are you ready to do that? Perhaps W and Rummy have been watching Rent; or maybe they attended an est session on the Yale campus with Sayed Rahmatullah Hashemi; or conceivably they took Harry Reid shopping for a pair of Boyshorts at Victoria’s Secret, BUT...they sure as hell aren’t fighting a war. The last time I witnessed America embroiled in a no-win “police action” misnomered as a war, was Vietnam. Remember the pictures of Lyndon Johnson and that disgraceful Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara playing parlor board games...”Oh. Let’s bomb this bridge but don’t touch the shoreline...OK, let’s bomb this jungle 800 times but don’t touch Hanoi...!” In his book, Dereliction of Duty: Lyndon Johnson, Robert McNamara, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Lies That Led to Vietnam, H.R. McMaster makes it very clear that, “the disaster in Vietnam was uniquely due to human failure and...This failure resulted from a fundamental dishonesty, and an abdication of responsibility to the American people, on the part of Lyndon Johnson (and) top advisors like Robert McNamara....” Even more contemptuous of that wing-tipped warrior McNamara was LTC Robert B. Adolph Jr. who wrote that, “Robert McNamara...was simply opportunistic and arrogant. He felt his first loyalty was to the president and not to the American soldiers he callously threw into the ‘meat grinder’ that was Vietnam.” Well, Americans are being thrown into a new meat grinder that is called Iraq and once again...the country’s leadership is letting them down. When the campaign in Iraq commenced, rumor had it that the first round would be called "Shock and Awe". As defined by its creators, “The aim of Rapid Dominance is to affect the will, perception, and understanding of the adversary to fit or respond to our strategic policy ends through imposing a regime of Shock and Awe...Our intent...is to field a range of capabilities to induce sufficient Shock and Awe to render the adversary impotent.” As CBS reported in January 2003, “If the Pentagon sticks to its current war plan, one day in March the Air Force and Navy will launch between 300 and 400 cruise missiles at targets in Iraq...On the second day, the plan calls for launching another 300 to 400 cruise missiles.” One Pentagon official boasted that, “There will not be a safe place in Baghdad...The sheer size of this has never been seen before, never been contemplated before”. One of Shock and Awes creators, Harlan Ullman, explained that, “We want them to quit. We want them not to fight...So that you have this simultaneous effect, rather like the nuclear weapons at Hiroshima, not taking days or weeks but in minutes”. Shock and Awe was never implemented and, instead of minutes...or hours...or days...or weeks...the campaign in Iraq is taking years and may well stretch into decades. All because political leaders thought they wanted war but only had the stomachs for a protracted police action. It’s like your mouth picking a street fight when your heart is only capable of some bitch-slapping. America invaded Normandy on June 6, 1944. The war in Europe concluded on May 8, 1945. Between these dates, the Allies fire-bombed Dresden and barbequed 25,000 to 35,000 civilians without so much as blinking an eye. America was at war. In the final weeks of the Battle for Berlin, the Allies never flinched as the Soviet troops raped “around 100,000” German women in Berlin. Conservatively estimated, over 150,000 German civilians were killed in this single battle. But, America was at war. So, what’s the point? The object of a war is to eliminate more of the enemy (and his resources) than of your own until the enemy surrenders. And surrender is something that Iraq has never done. America is wasting billions of dollars and thousands of lives in a pacification project...not a war. America’s leadership wimped out at the commencement of hostilities in Iraq and they have been wimping out ever since. In Iraq today, the American GI has to keep one eye on the insurgents and the other eye on his own country. In lieu of throwing Shock and Awe at the enemy, America’s leaders have tossed America’s finest, those who serve our military, into an untenable police action. Yet, our leaders still insist on calling this a war. The only war that is currently being fought is the vile predisposition of American leaders, and this unfortunately includes W and Rummy, to ask our troops to risk their lives in a war and then...condemn those very troops for fighting a war in lieu of being street cops. The elites and the MSM are all too ready to investigate and prosecute every unsubstantiated statement of “abuse” made by the locals and none too ready to afford our troops the leeway to render “the adversary impotent”. When Enron tumbled, Washington did not pursue the word processors that typed the lies or the bookkeepers that entered the phony numbers. Political leadership went after the heads of Enron’s leadership. Yet, in every instance of alleged abuse concocted by Iraqis who have never surrendered (and politically biased non-profit organizations), the political leadership of America kisses-up and makes scapegoats out of the average fighting American. Thus making the GI’s job even harder and more dangerous. Our troops on the ground in Iraq are: (1) trying to clean-up the mistakes made in Washington for ineptly initiated hostilities in Iraq and (2) trying not to get murdered in the process. If Iraq finally surrenders and Washington starts looking as hard for the murderers of Pfc. Kristian Menchaca and Pfc. Thomas Tucker as they are presently looking at fabrications of American “abuse”...sanity might be on the horizon. Until then, let our troops do their jobs without wondering if killing an Iraqi is a greater evil than getting killed themselves. Otherwise, Iraq will become another case of arrogant politicians callously throwing America’s finest into the ‘meat grinder’. And if that becomes the case...why not withdraw immediately with a final wimper before we feel the need to shackle more brave Americans at Camp Pendleton! And, for all of you doubters, just consider this...W’s motorcade drove past the Fort Bliss National Cemetery where burial services for Marine Lance Cpl. Miguel Terrazas were about to be held. W’s politicking delayed the funeral for about 30 minutes. W did not have 2 seconds to pay his condolences to the Terrazas family...he just kept on driving down the road. |
And isn't that a shame.
My only real objection to the article is this one - in fact, the actual military campaign was breathtakingly rapid as it was intended to be. What is stretching out isn't the breaking of the will of the Iraqi army to fight or the overthrow of a vicious police state dictator, nor is it a "protracted police campaign." Nor, actually, is it a classic "nation-building" campaign as it has been accused of being.
It is, in fact, an attempt to weave a set of disparate and conflicting elements into a federation in the face of armed opposition by people whose interests are being challenged thereby. That may prove to be asking too much in the long run, but at the moment it looks as if it just might be working.
I'm perfectly willing to discuss a more robust alternative policy. Should we have leveled Fallujah, for example, or Ramadi? In a classic burnt-earth campaign that probably would have been the alternative of choice. If we did not do so it was either out of irresolution as the author implies or it was because leadership did not consider it to be more helpful than harmful to the overall goal. I'm guessing the latter (with the proviso that it might very well be an uninformed and inaccurate guess. Comes with the territory.)
Oy...
I agree. When will be get Al-Zarqawi? I'm sick and tired about us getting his aides. How many aides does he need?
You wrote, "When will be get Al-Zarqawi?"
Be got Zarqawi.
A pacification project - best description of it that I've seen yet.
Maybe he meant al-Zawahiri. These names are like the specials on a Chinese restaurant menu. They all sound the same.
You're probably right. Maybe they can sell the surplus vowels to the Croats and Serbs.
No offense, but are you kidding me? I had to re-check the date of this thread with that statement.
What we're fighting now is NOT the Iraqi army. Command and control works differently for Al Quaeda, on entirely different channels than those that were anywhere near our crosshairs during the invasion. We fought two successive wars, against two different enemies (one of which is now our ally), from 2003 until now.
People just get it mixed up because we happen to be fighting those two wars on the same battleground, and the end of one and beginning of the other is kind of amorphous.
I stopped reading right there.
Second Bush is wrong on the war thread in an hour.
And of course, those posting them aren't against the war, they're just posting alternative viewpoints they have no interest in, though they won't say what their position is, exactly...
I think that's kinda his point.
Hay we gotta see what the enemy is up to.
As I said this is the next attack since immigration is losing steam.
I think you are correct. From the information I've gleaned from folks who were there, on the ground, that leveling either of these cities would have caused resentment among the Iraqi populace and created refugees. These refugees would have become recruitment fodder for the terrorists and a talking point (much like Palestinians) for insurgents.
Al Katraz? Al Kaseltzer?
You shouldn't have because the article wants the war fought as a war for the sake of the troops. It is a pretty kick-A approach.
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